Basic Audio Advice — These Are the Fundamentals of Good Sound
UPDATE 2026
The video linked to below is now private.
However, as you will see from our commentary, it really doesn’t make much of a difference that it is.
Do not believe a word you hear in this video.
You probably shouldn’t even watch it.
Let me state clearly one of our core beliefs here at Better Records.
Small speakers are incapable of lifelike musical reproduction in the home.
These soulful duets sound wonderful. The best sides are big, bold, open and transparent with a huge three-dimensional soundfield, strong presence, good rhythmic energy, and wonderfully dynamic leads and choruses. (more…)
This album has Demo Disc sound like you will not believe. Just listen to Heath’s arrangement of “Big Ben,” the second track on side two, for audiophile quality Big Band sound the likes of which you may have never heard.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Barney Kessel Available Now
We highly recommend you make every effort to find yourself a copy of this album and use it to test your system. The right pressing can be both a great Demo Disc and a great Test Disc.
The best Hot Stamper early pressings have the Tubey Magic we’ve come to expect from Contemporary circa 1958, with that warm, rich, full-bodied sound that RVG often struggles to get on tape. (But when he’s good he too is hard to beat.)
However, some pressings in our shootout managed to give us an extra level of transparency and ambience that most of the original pressings we played could not.
This is not an easy album to find good sound for, and finding a copy with this kind of richness and transparency is nearly impossible. If you’re a fan, you’ll be hard pressed to do any better than this one.
We played a pile of these recently, and let me tell you — it is tough sledding finding good sounding copies of this one that play quietly. Of course, it didn’t surprise us too much having been through a number of shootouts for Surrealistic Pillow, but it was frustrating just the same.
The sound of the recording itself varies quite a bit from track to track, with songs like Lather sounding amazing but other tracks not so much. These crazy San Francisco hippies were high as a kite and running around with the Grateful Dead, so I’m guessing that getting audiophile quality sound onto vinyl was pretty far down their list of turn-ons. Still, they managed to produce an album with sonic qualities that should appeal to most audiophiles. (more…)
Robert Brook has a blog which he calls
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
The Townshend Seismic Platform: ESSENTIAL in ANALOG Playback
Robert mentions that his original commentary for the Seismic Platform has been lost. Here is what’s left of it.
I shared my story of starting out with the ‘bladder” version of the sink (now called a platform) back in the early 2000s, noting what a pain it was and how the amount of air in each of the three bladders changed the sound of the turntable.
Fortunately, those days are gone. It is now set and forget (although, like everything else in audio, you need to tweak it a bit to get the most benefit from it). You can contact Townshend for pricing and the cost of shipping direct to you, no middleman (that used to be us!) involved. We cannot recommend any piece of audio gear more highly.
(Please note that we do not make a dime from this product. We want you to buy them — yes, ideally you’re going to need more than one — so that your stereo can show you just how much better our vintage vinyl pressings are when directly compared to any and all others.)
Some background:
A few years back I discovered something wonderful about the Seismic Sink I was using under my turntable to control vibration. In our experience, vibration control is one of the most important revolutionary advancements in audio of the last twenty years or so. This commentary should help to give your tweaking efforts more context.
The best copies sound pretty much the way the best copies of most Classic Rock records sound: tonally correct, rich, clear, sweet, smooth, open, present, lively, big, spacious, Tubey Magical, with breathy vocals and little to no spit, grit, grain or grunge.
That’s the sound of analog, and the best copies of this title have that sound.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rossini Available Now
UPDATE 2026
Our current favorite recording of La Boutique Fantasque is the one Solti recorded for Decca in 1957.
It belongs to that very special group of roughly 150 orchestral recordings which have the potential to offer the discriminating (and well-heeled) audiophile the best performances of major works with by far the highest quality sound.
Modern remastered pressings simply compete with the best pressings of these landmark recordings.
The Fiedler (LSC 2084) is still a very good record, but we no longer see much reason to carry it when the Solti is better in almost every way (and quieter as a rule to boot).
Below we have reproduced our full stamper sheet, including the Shootout Winning stampers, which happen to be 3S/4S for this album.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now
This week’s letter came from Dan, a long time customer of ours. When he ordered this album he left the following note in his order comments:
This is one of my favorite albums of all time!! One of my personal desert island discs. Can’t wait to hear it!.
I’m not sure his ears were prepared for what was about to happen though. Read on to see what Dan thought of his Very Hot Who’s Next.
Hey Tom,
Just listened to the Very Hot Stamper of “Who’s Next” and thought I’d drop a little note: Holy F**K that was POWERFUL!
No record I own ever did that!
And I’m talking bone-rattling, earth-shaking, sock-you-in-the-gut POWERFUL. I’ve always known that The Who were one of the most intense bands in the history of rock n’ roll. Hell, everybody knows that and it’s part of the reason we love ’em so much. But with this record, I experienced the sheer physical force of their music like I NEVER have before. I couldn’t believe I heard bass notes hang in the air and resonate for long stretches. Bass notes never just hang like that! No record I own ever did that. (more…)